AT FIRST SIGHT: A Novella(12)
“Verily,” she said. “Your people will be very jealous, when they see you in that cape.”
Which brought her around to her announcement. It was a plan hastily conceived only that morning, but one she had reviewed and reexamined, and she felt it a sound one.
Once Robbie was returned to his cradle and she and her three companions had prayed over the Christmas dinner, she said, quite casually, “Rasannock, be prepared tomorrow to return the babe to your village.”
He was daintily separating the roasted partridge flesh from its bones. He paused, his plucked brows knitting in puzzlement, then flicked a sidewise glance at Gantu.
“Tis best you stay with Robbie,” she explained, “and your people – at least, for the time being.”
“What’s the tearin’ hurry?” Bonnie Charlie asked, wiping his greasy hand on his much-stained shirt. “Thought we weren’t leavin’ for another week.”
How much to share? What had occurred between her and Adam was of a personal nature; yet, like the gentle flapping of a heron’s wings over the South River stirred the summer’s wintry air, her decision’s outcome would affect one and all in some way.
Her gaze moved from Bonnie Charlie’s gnarled countenance to Gantu’s fierce one to Rasannock’s winsome one. The resolve she forced into her voice reminded her of her father’s, of the sorrow and anger and horror sheathed in steel words, when delivering difficult news to a terminally ill patient.
“First, you three should know I am not Eve Wainwright.”
Gobsmacked, all three stared at her, as if she had revealed she was the Good Queen Bess returned from the afterlife.
“From last night’s visitor, I learned an old enemy who knows me as Lady Evangeline Bradshaw back in England is within our proximity – a day’s march north of here. “
She cleared her throat. “He is a most powerful enemy. There is the possibility he may advance this far. For a while, I judge it wise to absent myself from here. To head in the opposite direction, south to Fort Christina and lose myself once more in a crowd.”
A crowd. Its oppressing din and stench outside Whitehall that cold January day had only been exceeded by the three-month’s cramped and nauseating confinement aboard the ship bound for Fort Christina.
Crowds . . . confinement. Childish fears to entertain now, at her age. She had always thought herself mature and logical . . . that life was what it was, and one made the best of it. But now, all too often, she second-guessed herself and fretted and feared unnecessarily.
She looked first to Bonnie Charlie. “Can you carve a cradleboard for Rasannock’s back?”
He nodded but asked, “Yew certain sure this is the best way? Gantu and me can string the English cur up like a buck and gut him for yew.”
She fought back a smile. “No. He has troops with him. Both you and Gantu are welcome to remain here at Virgin Queen Tavern, of course. But I know you, Bonnie Charlie, feel most comfortable in the wilds of the forest.” She did not want him staying because of some errant sense of duty.
Then to Gantu. “Among the Swedes, Gantu, with your skin coloring, you would most naturally stand out. Your manumission papers would be liable for questioning. Best you and Skute do not accompany me, either.”
She could not afford to lose this new family of hers. Her mind scrambled for a solution. “If, within a month, it should prove dangerous to return here, to remain at the inn, we can all rendezvous at your people’s village, Rasannock.” But from there, she had no idea where next to settle.
The three glanced at one another. “Travel would you alone to Fort Christina, Mistress?” Gantu asked in his sing-song patois.
“I traveled alone from Fort Christina here,” she reminded them.
An uneasy solitary journey on the bony mule Molly she had purchased with the near the last of her funds. How deep and dense the forest had seemed. The overbearing trees with their moss-draped arms shut out sunlight and shut off breath . . . much as had the crowd at Whitehall and the sloop’s crowd of passengers. Times like that her mind fogged, and she feared she was likely becoming unhinged.
Gantu weighed her words, then grunted, “Guard the inn for you I will, until you return, mistress.”
The old fur trapper wedged a ragged nail between his teeth to pick out food, then exchanged nods with Gantu. “Fort Christina, yew say? Been wantin’ to do justice to their alehouse’s cup. Guess, I’ll just fall in with yew on the trail.”
If only William – or, worse, Adam, when he discovered she had reneged on her part of the bargain – did not pick up her trail.
§§ CHAPTER FOUR §§
Adam scooped the two dice into one palm. “Eight,” he said and cast them. Hazard was a complicated game, but the African Gantu was holding his own. They both had started with twenty-five red berries plucked – and at this Adam had to grin dryly – from the Lady Evangeline’s pagan, festooned holly and mistletoe garlands. Her wildly curling hair that defined restraint was equally as pagan, if she but knew.
The dice clattered to a halt, showing seven and five. “Mon, you one lucky devil!” the blackamoor growled and forked over a berry from his remaining seventeen.
“I would say we are both lucky we escaped the Caribbean work gangs.” Adam counted himself lucky that he could capitalize on this factor he had in common with Gantu, although the black giant had slaved as a blacksmith and brickmaker not on a Barbados sugar plantation but on a Jamaican tobacco plantation.